Rainbow Dash had prepared herself for that date. And no, not the romantic date with whatever your favorite male singer is that she had zero hopes of ever getting. In actuality, the date was really August 8, when her rainbow factory, Arcobaleno Ltd., which she'd managed for eight and three-fourths of a year, would receive its next semi-annual standards inspection. On that date, five ponies would visit Arcobaleno Ltd. to ensure that it followed Equestrian and local rules and other guidelines. However, said ponies were generally not very bright due to them missing an abhorrent secret which had been guarded for much longer than Rainbow Dash had been manager: the process of making the Spectra which composed 80% of each rainbow made, as well as the contents of the remaining 20%. It used to be unicorn magic making up the larger part of the rainbows and water being used in the smaller part to prevent the rainbows from lingering for too long, but somewhere when Rainbow Dash got her job, unbeknownst to the vast majority of Equestria, an alternative was found, and boy, was it gruesome. It begins with a flight test where young Pegasi are tested to see if they fly well, or if they suck. The sucky fliers ended up going to Arcobaleno Ltd., where (okay, here it comes; it isn't my fault if your underwear is ruined forever) they were to be slaughtered, for their blood cells to be used to make Spectra, and the blood's plasma became the replacement for water. Yikes! How could the inspectors miss it? Maybe stupidity, but whatever it was, it was up to Rainbow Dash to exploit it yet again. So Rainbow Dash called her most competent worker: "Oh, Woodrow, I need you right now! I don't care if you were finally about to 5-star Never Gonna Give You Up; Just Dance 4 can be paused!" A half-minute later, a Pegasus with a neon green and yellow hair and a pale green fur coat showed up in front of her desk.
"Listen," he complained. "I am tired of being called by my real name. Please call me Woody, some adjective related to toasters, or even Wooden Toaster."
"Sorry, Toasty, but we have something else to actually worry about. It's August 8, meaning whatever suckers the Business Standards Team of Equestria [AKA: the BSTOE] who need to see our factory are coming! And since they'll likely to be idiotic foals as they were the last time around, I need you to take care of the dark stuff… If you know what I mean," replied Rainbow Dash.
Woodrow then answered with, "Uh… What now?"
Annoyed, Rainbow Dash simply said, "I need you to 'idehay the odiesbay in the asementbay.'"
In an even more ditzy tone, Woodrow asked, "Can you please translate that out of Swahili? I barely understand English, and that's my first language."
Rainbow Dash was extremely enraged by Woodrow, leading her to yell out, "Good mother of Luna's face! I need you to hide the killing machines and hide all the corpses in B4F so the BSTOE fails to give a flying feather!" Woodrow instantly replied, "Yes, ma'am!" and cantered off to do just that. Meanwhile, Rainbow Dash nervously waited for her "suckers" to arrive. Eventually, she heard the sound of Pegasi landing a carriage. OK, better look out the window, she thought. When she did she was in for a surprise: One of her best friends, Fluttershy, was pulling the carriage, and by one, I mean 2; there was a clone of her helping the real one! To make things even wackier, three humans walked out of the carriage! One she noticed, was dressed as a Colt Scout, except obviously more human. The other two stood out for their hairstyles: one had green hair, and the other's hair looked like it was part of his hat. Maybe, they may be tougher to deal with than I had originally thought, thought Rainbow Dash.
The Fluttershy clone revealed himself to be a "special" changeling who had bright red fur with a leaf-green mane. He remarked, "That has been my hardest workout ever! Why, Cheren, did you need to eat 99 red velvet cupcakes when you knew jitteriness would make carrying you harder?" Cheren then replied, "I'mveryveryverysorryaboutthatStevenbutIwaspractic allydrunkonthemsoifyouneed me, I will be on the ground." He went from hyperactive to near-stoned instantly. Fluttershy crankily, from the stress of Cheren's bad idea, opted to let him ride on her, sighing, "Nate, you had better watch out for him or else." The "hat-haired" boy said, "Fine. But how come you always ask me and Steven to do things for you, and almost never N?" N then blushed and replied quickly, "Oh, look at that, we're here; I'd better knock on the back entrance!"
Not long after N hit the doorbell, Rainbow Dash soon answered. "Hello. You must be the BSTOE… However, I would have never called it. For the 4 strangers, my name is Rainbow Dash. Could you introduce yourselves?" Fluttershy spoke up. "Well, the stoner riding on my back is Cheren, the boy with puffed up hair is Nate, and the admittedly handsome guy with green hair has a name that's so ridiculously long, we all call him N. They came here from the faraway region of Unova." Then Steven said, "And my name is Steven, or as only my friends me call me, Changeling Conroy. We are here to make sure this rainbow factory is up-to-date in its practices! Are you ready?" Rainbow Dash replied, "I guess. Let me show you around. Maybe, I will even educate you on how Equestria makes its rainbows…"